Paid a bribe? Talk about it here

Website provides people opportunity to voice their experiences with the corrupt

www.ipaidabribe.com gives people who have paid a bribe under duress to raise their voice against the growing corruption along with ‘uncovering the market price of corruption’.

They can log on to the website and post their experiences related to bribery under sections ‘I paid a bribe’, ‘I did not pay a bribe’, ‘I did not have to pay a bribe’ and ‘I don't want to pay a bribe’.

“IPAB is like an exchange mandi where market prices are shared – market price of bribes i.e. - where, how much, whom. A visit to IPAB is like a confession in a church, for the bribe giver and even to the bribe-taker,” says Swati Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha.

High reward

The entire system is corroded with corruption because the people who take bribe have low risk and high reward. If the risk factor is increased people will think twice before taking a bribe, Ramanathan says.

The portal was informally launched by Janaagraha on August 15 and it has recorded 35,000 hits from 109 countries till Thursday. The site has registered 535 reports of bribe paid and 100 incidents of bribes not being paid from Bangalore. A browse through the website shows the department-wise break up of cases and total amount collected as bribe by each department.

For example, officers of the Department of Stamps and Registration have collected Rs 41.53 lakh as bribe through 88 cases registered. The access is not restricted to Bangaloreans alone, residents of 52 cities from across India can share their corruption stories.

“We are not here to target government officials/individuals.  What we look for is systemic reform. In fact, we have been approached by KPTCL to work with them officially to reduce corruption,” T R Raghunandan, programme co-ordinator, ‘I Paid a Bribe’.  The website will soon have ‘Khata without Korruption Kampaign’ and a ‘Whistleblower’s Corner’.